e some
very special value, or he would not so readily have offered ten dinars
for it. If I held back, by and by he would offer twenty.

"'I therefore answered quietly--"It is a large sum for a small brush,
if I should hear of it I will let you know."

"'"In a week or ten days I will come again," he said, "perhaps by that
time you may be able to find it."

"'He probably named a week or ten days in order not to appear too
eager, and also to give me time to pretend to have succeeded in my
search.

"'A week passed and a fortnight, and still he did not return. Indeed
he never came back, and whether he was captured by the police--for I
have no doubt he was one of the thieves who had robbed the old
miser--or whether he and his gang had been obliged on account of some
other crime to fly from Bagdad, I do not know; one thing only is
certain, I have never seen him again.

"'Nearly three months had elapsed, and I had almost ceased to expect
the reappearance of the man, and even to regret that I did not accept
his offer of ten dinars for the brush at the time he made it, when one
afternoon, a few days ago, a man came to me suffering from a growth or
wen on the back of his neck, close to the spinal cord. He desired that
I should paint this with a certain remedy or lotion I have for such
tumours. Finding the lotion, which I had not used for some time, but
not the brush with which I was accustomed to apply it, I took hold of
the little brush which I had picked up, and made use of that. The
hairs of this brush were so much longer than those in my old brush,
that I had not proceeded far before I happened accidentally to pass the
wet brush across the spine. Immediately the man became fixed in the
attitude in which he happened to be as I was operating upon him. His
features retained the expression precisely which they wore at the
moment the wet brush had touched the spine, and, in short, the man was
in a trance exactly similar to that in which I had found the old miser
three months before.

"'I had discovered the virtues of the brush. At first I was a good
deal frightened, not knowing how long the trance might continue.
However, after the lapse of twelve hours, the man recovered
consciousness again, and the complete use of all his faculties just as
suddenly as the old miser had done three months previously.

"'I persuaded the man that he had fallen asleep during the operation of
anointing his tumour, and that I had housed